Dream
by DoctorDaisy
Summary: Joy was happy. Everything was great in Riley's life. It felt like she had everything she needed to make each day perfect. Until Joy remembered that something was missing, after a fun filled day of songs and cotton candy.


"And, we're clear!"

Joy bounced on her feet, nearly squealing. It was the end of another great day, great enough to call it perfect. Dad had one of his rare full days off from work when Riley wasn't at school and Mom wasn't busy with Mom things, so the whole family went on a trip to the fair. They took part in nearly all of the attractions, even the karaoke machine, all while successfully avoiding any clowns that might have been prowling around the area, giving balloon animals to children who didn't realizing how terrifying the beasts really were.

The day was full of so many exciting moments that Riley had fallen asleep during the car ride home. Knowing Mom's refusal to wake Riley in situations such as that, Joy was certain that Dad would carry Riley to her room and make sure she was comfortable in her own bed. Joy clasped her hands together at the thought of the happy family, then twirled around to beam at her partners, who were all very obviously tired and wanting nothing more than to sit down and rest for at least five minutes.

Anger was glaring at everything within his line of sight. Disgust took to fixing her hair as she yawned. Fear looked almost bored, which was a shock in and of itself. Sadness dropped face-first onto the floor. Joy's grin grew. The more exhausted Riley's life had made the team, the better the day had been; that's what Joy believed.

Joy raised her hands into the air, trying to spread and share her happiness. "Great job, everybody. The day was a complete success. Let's review."

The other emotions groaned.

Joy laughed, letting her arms fall to her sides and placing her hands on her hips. "Come on, everyone. Today was a blast! We went to the fair-"

"All day," Anger interrupted through clenched teeth, dark red lines under his eyes and a slouched position.

Joy nodded. "We went on the rides-"

"And the boy in front of us threw up," Disgust gagged, the recollection forcing her to wipe down her already clean dress.

"We won a prize at Knock-a-Bottle-"

Fear tried to make himself look smaller, suddenly alert. "An animal that looks like the cross of a duck and a panda with all-seeing eyes."

Joy's smile faltered slightly. "Riley made a new friend-"

"But we didn't get her number," Sadness said, her voice muffled from her position. She lifted her head to continue. "We don't know if we'll ever see her again."

Joy sighed, letting her shoulders slump for only a second before she straightened up again and closed her eyes. "Joy, how did the cotton candy taste?"

Joy spun around.

"It tasted like magic, Joy!"

Joy turned back, eyes still shut.

"Thank you, Joy."

Joy opened her eyes, her smile returned at full force. The rest of the team stared at her, unamused and wanting to finish up as quickly as possible.

"Guys, today was great!" Joy insisted, gesturing around with her hands to prove her point. From the lack of response by her fellows, she knew she wasn't proving anything. Joy tapped her chin as she tried to think of a new tactic, and as if to give her inspiration, the memory track began audibly recalling Riley's singing. Joy ran over and carefully picked the yellow and purple memory up, holding it out for the others to view. "See, look!

Anger rolled his eyes and tried to turn away, but Disgust pulled him back by the collar of his shirt. She leaned over to whisper. "If I have to suffer, so do you."

"This was the karaoke. Riley always sings so well," Joy rambled on, moving to gesture to each of the newly formed memories along the wall. "There's the wall climber, there's the bounce house, there's the toaster coaster, that's- that's the boy throwing up-"

Disgust shivered.

Joy pulled back at that last memory, returning her attention to the one in her hands. Joy brushed her thumb along the sphere, then returned it to it's path. She waltzed backwards and pressed a button on the floor, sending all memories to Long Term. They began their ride away and Joy smiled fondly, her eyes following the departing spheres. "Riley will never forget today."

Sadness, having raised her head at some point, tilted her body towards the console and the blinking light atop it. "Dream Productions is ready to broadcast."

Anger form bristled momentarily, and he trudged to the center of he console, taking position for Dream Duty. "If they send up that gum commercial one more time, I will use curse word number _twelve_."

Fear gasped, covering his mouth in utter shock and disbelief. "Not number _twelve!_ "

Disgust watched the red emotion as if he was babbling like Riley at the age of two. "Do you really want to get us grounded _again?_ "

Joy merely laughed. The others turned to send her a dull look, besides Sadness, who had since returned her head to the floor. Joy let out an amused and relenting sigh. "Listen, you're all in need of a rest-"

"Yeah," The others droned.

Joy took slow steps towards the side of the controls. "So, Anger, I'll take Dream Duty tonight, okay?"

Anger was more than happy to oblige her request, and along with Fear and Disgust practically ran up the stairs to their shared bedroom with a chorus of goodnight's, grunts of acknowledgement, and one 'whatever'.

"Get a good night's sleep, everyone!" Joy called, then covered her mouth to quiet her giggles. After they subsided and only a pleasant smile remained, she turned to the console with a slightly dimmer glow than before. Riley was in REM, and the dream was already off schedule. Joy was sure that everything was fine, and that missing a moment or two of the production wouldn't ruin the possible story the folks down below had prepared.

Joy was about to connect to Dream Productions when she felt something on her leg. She looked down to see that Sadness had crawled her way over and had grabbed her ankle. Sadness looked up at Joy from her position on the floor. "Are you sure you can do Dream Duty two nights in a row?"

Joy waved a dismissive hand. "I'll be fine. Go on up and get some rest."

Sadness didn't make a move to get up, so Joy took the hand off of her ankle and helped Sadness to her feet. With that, Joy faced the console again, getting ready to start her job. Sadness remained where she was, with a confused expression on her face. "Joy?"

"Mhm?" Joy answered absentmindedly, not turning around.

Sadness tilted her head, finding herself unable to focus her attention on the one she was trying to speak to. "Are you okay?"

Joy shrugged, still watching the console. "I'm great. Why?"

Sadness began swaying back and forth, looking at nothing. "I don't know, I..."

Joy looked behind herself in time to see Sadness stumble, and Joy immediately caught her. "Hey, easy there."

Once Sadness regained stable footing, she placed a hand on her head, her confusion growing into worry. "I feel like I'm forgetting something."

"That's because you're tired," Joy reasoned, gently patting her fellow's head. She chuckled. "You definitely need to get some rest."

Sadness gave Joy a look that the yellow emotion had never seen on the teardrop shaped face before, one that asked Joy to take her own advice.

"I'm fine. Really," Joy insisted Sadness didn't look convinced, so Joy put on a lively show and she hopped about. Once she finally planted her feet on the ground, Joy gave a playful nudge against Sadness's shoulder, turning the blue emotion towards the stairs. Sadness lingered for a moment longer before slowly making her way to the shared bedroom.

Once Sadness was out of sight, which took about a minute, Joy let herself yawn. She really was tired, but she knew the others needed their rest, or Riley would be irritable in the morning whether Joy was there or not.

Joy stretched her arms and twisted her waist to loosen herself up and feel more energized, then swung back to face the controls, delicately pressing a large button. "Okay, Dream Productions, I'm going to give you one more shot here. No nightmares tonight, got it? Riley's had a great day, and we're gonna keep it that way."

The main screen swam and shifted as the production entered Riley's vision. The fair ground inflated into sight as if the entirety was a giant bouncy castle. Riley and her parents bounced about and landed in a roller coaster that began zipping around the entire park in a flash. The boy seated in front of them was thr-

Joy sent the screen a dull look. "No. None of that."

She wasn't going to let a perfect day end with dwelling on the negative, and since she most certainly wasn't going back down to the production center to demand a change, there was only one thing she could do. Joy bent down to get a look under the console, and only just touched a specific wire with the tips of her fingers when she heard the dialogue change.

"This cotton candy is delicious."

Joy stood back up as the screen changed from the ride to the nearby picnic area at the side of a beautiful lake. Riley and her parents say together on a blanket spread across the grass, with delicious lunches and desserts ready to enjoy. Joy leaned back with a confident smirk. "That's more like it."

Riley sat between her parents as they all ate their treats. Carnival music played in the distance, signifying the cheerful mood. The family laughed, sitting together as the moon's outline shone through the sky long before it was scheduled to appear, dancing with the sunlight. The pink cotton candy looked cuddly and soft.

Something stirred in the back of Joy's thoughts. For a brief moment, she felt weightless. She had to place her hands on the console to support herself. Joy blinked slowly. "Wait, what's...?"

 _Who's your friend who likes to play?_

Joy scrambled away from the controls, holding herself as if she were physically hit. She stared wide eyed at the screen displaying a happy scenario, with Riley and her parents sitting together and sharing their treats. Riley didn't react to the color or texture, how fluffy and soft it was, and Joy knew that she never would.

Joy stumbled back to her post, braced against the console to keep herself from falling over. She was breathing in gasps. Her attention snapped back to the controls and she fumbled to retrieve a memory from Long Term.

She sent a request for a specific memory of one of Riley's concerts. She received and error message, claiming that the memory did not exist. She tried again, requesting a specific game of tag. Again, the message said that the request failed. She didn't stop trying, searching instead for anything involving a pink elephant with a bowler hat, and received the same response. Each search she sent returned with a notice of absence.

"It's okay, it's fine, he's not gone, he's just..." Joy kept up her smile, though her eyebrows furrowed with clear concern. She struggled to think of an appropriate word before settling on the closest explanation she could think of. "Lost."

Maybe she just needed to broaden her search. She knew she wasn't supposed to have direct access to both official, scrapped, and potential Dream Sequences, but she had to make an exception, at least for this. Joy returned to the open panel under the console and rewired the desk, siphoning energy from Dream Productions and diverting it to the search. The screen began to flicker.

"There's gotta be a memory of you somewhere," Joy said confidently, through shallow breath. "Happy or sad, I don't _care_ , just let me find you."

She broadened the search again by retasking more energy, unaware that the blinking of the screen was spreading to the entirety of Headquarters. The lights alternated between being so bright that they threatened to blind anyone who would look directly at them to so dim that they appeared to have faded away entirely.

"Come on, come on, why won't you help me?" Joy slammed a hand down on a button that refused to budge no matter the pressure she applied. It was as if Riley was fighting her, but that couldn't have been happening. Joy knew that Riley would want to remember. Joy knew Riley so well.

If there was an alarm to alert of the hazardous situation, it had been silenced by its loss of power. Joy didn't noticed what was happening, too focused on her mission. If Joy had been listening to her surroundings she might have heard confused muttering from the bedroom, along with complaints about being woken and Fear falling down the stairs once he saw what Joy was doing.

"Uh-oh!"

"What do you think you're doing?"

Anger emerged after Disgust, brushing a hand over his face. "That's it; here comes number twelve."

Anger took in a deep breath, but he merely exhaled it when he saw the state of the room. Disgust walked past Fear, ignoring him asking for help up, and squinted judgingly at the control area. Sadness was the last to appear, rubbing her eyes tiredly before realizing what was happening. Sadness walked down the stairs as quickly as she felt she could, stopping far behind the control panel, unsure of whether or not to keep her distance. She watched the frantic emotion pleadingly. "Joy, stop! You're overstimulating Headquarters!"

Joy paused for only a second before returning to her work. "He can't be gone."

Sadness watched her with confusion before her eyes widened in realization and she began swaying on her feet. She became disoriented, and even through her apparent daze her eyes began filling up with tears.

Disgust crossed her arms and cocked her head, eyes lidded. "Great. Now you've made Sadness cry. Good job, Joy."

Joy didn't respond, as if she didn't even hear the green emotion speak. Joy's smile refused to leave her face, but the happiness had long since left her voice. She watched the pleasant dream almost hysterically. "Where are you? You can't be gone! She has to have one memory of you left!"

The three still very tired emotions looked at each other in hope that one of them could have possibly had an explanation for what was happening in front of them. Obviously there was some sort of misunderstanding. Joy would never get into such a panicked state, as she was Joy and Joy did not know how to panic. Panicking would require at least a believed negative outcome, and Joy always saw the bright side of all situations, which was exactly why she was frantically grabbing at the controls, hyperventilating and probably causing a major mental breakdown.

The situation that could not have possibly been happening was dangerously close to triggering a blackout and forced Anger to run behind Joy and wrap his arms around her, trapping her arms to her waist. He pulled her back, and she fought against him, kicking at the air when he hoisted her off the floor. She yelled, her smile vanishing, replaced with a look of desperation. "No, let me go! I promised him!"

"She hasn't slept in two days," Fear said apprehensively. He ran up to the console, fiddling with buttons and levers and an attempt to resolve the issue, but he had no idea what Joy had done, or even if she was the one who did it. Fear placed his hands on the sides of his head as if the act would keep his rational thoughts inside and uncontaminated by the crazy. "She's gone insane from the pressure!"

Joy tried to pry Anger's hands off of her, but she only managed to free an arm that weakly reached out towards the console. "I promised I'd take Riley to the moon!"

"The moon?" Anger repeated, then scoffed. "You're already there, coo-coo clock."

"Joy..." Sadness regained her senses, joining the almost hyperventilating Fear at the console and crawling under it, disconnecting cables that were never meant to be there. The lights slowly returned to their normal emanation, forcing the screen to freeze on an image of Riley smiling with her sweet candy treat. After the rare feeling of relief washed over Sadness, it near immediately vanished when she looked behind her.

Joy was still feebly holding out her hand, and Anger was not loosening his grip. He was asking her what in the world she was doing, but she wouldn't answer. Disgust stayed back, unsure of what she should do. Fear bolted to the green emotion's side and hid behind her dress, much to her displeasure, but she was too distracted to try and remove him.

Sadness saw the feeling behind Joy's eyes, even though tears were still falling from her own. Sadness took a few steps closer and placed a hand on Anger's arm. Anger glared at her touch, but his expression softened, though barely noticeable, when he let his attention shift to her face.

"Let her go," Sadness said, and Anger stared at her like she was just as crazy as the yellow star. Sadness nodded her certainty, and after a minute of internal deliberation and muttering about how anything that happened after would be entirely Sadness's fault, Anger growled an opened his arms, leaving Joy to lose her support and fall to her knees.

Anger rejoined Fear and Disgust, raising a brow at Joy and Sadness, as tears were never usually seen in the eyes of one of them. The expression on Joy's face was one the other emotions hadn't seen on her before, and that managed to shock them into silence and genuine worry for the unknown situation. They did _not_ want another 'run away' incident, as it was so cleverly called, or anything remotely similar to that disaster regardless of how well it turned out in the end.

Joy wrapped her arms around herself, hugging tightly. She shut her eyes and lowered her head towards to floor. She began quietly singing, just loud enough for the others to hear. "Who's your friend who likes to play? Bing Bong, Bing Bong..."

"Bing Bong?" Anger questioned. His eyes glazed over and he put a hand to his chin in thought. "I know that name."

Fear held a similar expression for a moment, wobbling on his feet, until he gasped. "I remember him! He chased away Jangles when he came around to ruin our concerts!"

Disgust watched Fear with confusion, then recalled the same thing, at first with wonder and then with an unimpressed gaze. "Wait a second, is he that pink fashion disaster with a pair of legs? I can't believe we thought that outfit was a good idea."

Sadness wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweater. She had never asked what happened, even when Joy returned alone. Sadness looked to the floor almost shamefully. "He helped us get back to Headquarters."

Joy had apparently long stopped listening to the conversation. Her hands covered her eyes. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "His rocket makes you yell 'hooray'."

"Bing Bong, Bing Bong-" Anger finished the song absentmindedly, then realized that he did. "I know that song. We went to-"

He returned his gaze to Joy, watching her in shock.

Anger swallowed. "We went to the moon together."

Disgust and Fear didn't understand at first, then it dawned on them as well and they looked to each other in distressed understanding.

"Bing Bong-" Fear began, but he had to start again as his eyes widened and he stiffened considerably. "Wait- I-I saw him when Riley was dreaming, he- I thought he was a costume, I didn't think it was really-"

Joy sniffed, trying to keep herself quiet. She kept her hands in front of her face. She couldn't break in front of them. She was supposed to be jolly and fun. She was supposed to look on the bright side, to see the good in the bad. She cleared her throat and spoke with false cheerfulness. "You didn't know, so it's not your fault."

Fear nearly sighed in relief before realizing at the last moment that it was not the time, and the realization was due to Disgust turning to glare at him for not even trying to hide his calmed nerves. The look Disgust sent him made him more nervous than before, and made him speak without thinking. "W-what happened to him?"

Joy opened her mouth to respond to Fear's question, but ultimately decided against it, her positive mask beginning to fade away. Disgust was not buying Joy's act in the slightest, but she wasn't going to say anything. Anger felt similar, but instead of worrying about his image, as Disgust was, he just didn't want to deal with two emotional emotions.

Disgust failed to be subtle and looked to Sadness for an explanation, as the blue emotion was the only one with Joy at the time. Sadness averted her gaze, fixating her sight on the one who was with her on that journey. Joy's hands had fallen to rest on her knees, revealing her tired eyes.

Sadness knelt next to Joy, but didn't touch her. Sadness eyed Joy for a long moment before turning to Fear with a surprisingly calm glow. "You should ask her again. If that's alright..."

Fear jumped at her gaze. He looked between Sadness and Joy in confusion. He tried to take a step back in some sort of an attempt to escape, but Anger pushed him forward, his expression the only thing needed to threaten Fear into cooperating. Fear began shivering, dreading the reaction he'd receive from his words. "J-J-Joy? What h-happened to Bing Bong?"

Joy blinked slowly. She didn't reply at first, beginning to curl in on herself as she remembered. "We fell into the Memory Dump. The rocket couldn't hold us both. We couldn't get out together, so he made me go alone and I didn't know-"

She covered her mouth as her voice cracked, trying to silence herself. She saw the way the others looked at her when they heard her voice break. She saw the uncertainty. She was the personification of happiness. She wasn't supposed to be like this. She knew how important it was to be sad, but there was no one who could help her. Not with this.

"How could I _forget_ him?" She whispered to herself, but Sadness heard.

"Riley doesn't remember him," Sadness reasoned. She didn't make a move to come closer, but her expression was all that was needed to show the way she felt. "I forgot him, too."

After Joy and Bing Bong had fallen into the Memory Dump, Sadness had wandered away into the winding paths of Long Term memory, believing that it would be best if she were lost and never found. When Joy returned alone, Sadness didn't realize Bing Bong had ever been there.

The memory was gone. All memories of him were gone. There was nothing left to recover.

But, there were still _other_ memories.

"Do you remember when we were playing dolls, and we ripped off Teddy's head?" Sadness asked, the memory of the stuffed bear still in Riley's mind, hidden somewhere in Long Term and usually resurfacing when Sadness was on Dream Duty. "We cried because Mom didn't know how to fix him. He was our friend, and we lost him."

Joy remembered. She remembered Riley crying, and though she hadn't understood before, she finally knew why Sadness had needed to take control in that situation. If Riley hadn't been upset, Mom wouldn't have known that something was wrong. Even though, in the end, it didn't even matter.

"We cried for days. We lost our best friend. Then, Riley created Bing Bong," Sadness said, and the sound of his name made tears prick the corners of Joy's eyes.

She didn't understand what she was feeling. She loved Bing Bong, but it hurt to think about him. Just like Riley loved the frozen spring lake of Minnesota. Except Riley stopped loving Bing Bong.

"But, Bing Bong didn't make Riley forget Teddy," Sadness continued. "She was still sad that her Teddy was gone, but Bing Bong helped her by just _being there_ , right?"

Joy slowly nodded.

Sadness placed a hand on top of Joy's. Joy looked down at her touch, not gripping her hand in return, but not pulling away, perhaps because she didn't have the strength to do so. Sadness smiled softly. "Bing Bong helped save Riley by staying behind."

"He did," Joy agreed, letting out a shaky laugh. She tried to return the smile, but her sight drifted to the frozen screen still displaying cotton candy and she shuddered. She turned to face Sadness fully, her eyes beginning to overflow. "It's sad."

Sadness nodded. It was sad. Bing Bong gave his existence to save Riley, and Riley would never know. Riley would never know how Bing Bong kept their rocket for years just to fly with her again. She'd never know how he remembered their song, or how badly he wanted to see her again.

Though, if he had not done what he did, then Joy would have vanished, and Riley would have run away, her console disabled for good. The good ending still ended as a painful one, the loss of an imaginary friend, one that would be missed. Sadness knew that missing someone once they were gone meant that they were important to someone when they were still there. Just like a teddy bear to a young girl.

Once Sadness had done what was needed, then it was time for Joy.

Sadness tilted her head, then grinned. Joy slowly looked up to her, and seeing the exaggerated expression on that emotion in particular caused Joy to return the teardrop with a small smile of her own, even managing a giggle when Sadness caressed the top of her head as Joy would do to her.

The emotional display had Anger staring with his jaw slack. He shook his head, dismissing the whole event as some sort of dream. That thought reminded him of what he was supposed to be doing in the first place and was apparently the start of the whole ordeal. Anger gestured behind him with a thumb, directing his attention to Sadness. "I've got Dream Duty covered."

Sadness smiled lightly in thanks, slowly helping Joy to her feet, though Sadness was interrupted by Joy pulling her into a hug. After that, Joy didn't fight back, allowing herself to be guided away. Sadness led her by the hand, a sympathetic glow on her face as she continued fulfilling her purpose. Joy was brought up the stairs, and soon the two were out of sight.

Anger, Fear, and Disgust were left at the main console by themselves yet again, though they weren't sure whether these circumstances were better than the last time. Fear twiddled his thumbs, and Disgust crossed her arms while the expression on her face betrayed her concern. Anger's eyes lingered on the stairs before he looked between the purple and green emotions, a scowl slowly forming on his face.

"Why are you still here?" Anger suddenly growled, breaking the tense silence, startling Fear into giving out a shocked yelp and Disgust to send him a unimpressed glare. Anger pushed them away from the console, and after regaining their balance both Disgust and Fear made their way to the bedroom, though not without hesitating and looking back more than once.

Anger's intensity barely softened, instead focusing itself on his job. He turned to the console and kicked it. The screen glitched a few times before switching to real time, a show depicting Rainbow Unicorn and friends in some sort of fashion runway. Anger rolled his eyes, and his eyelids drooped. Usually these kind of dreams were so boring that, to keep himself awake, he had to do something else to occupy his time. He didn't make a move to do anything else, seeing as he was awake enough as it was.

Honestly, he doubted that any of them would be getting a good night's sleep after _that_.


End file.
